I’m working on a english writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.
By all accounts, Robert Altman’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye is a “deliberate departure” from the novel, not a “faithful” adaptation with strict “fidelity” to its source. The article, “Adaptation” by Robert Merrill discusses the extremely divided and diverse critical responses to the 1973 film. Some some critics call it a “travesty” but others point out how the film is “essentially faithful to the spirit of Chandler” and an example of “how adaptation may work best when it does not strive to be very literal or even, in some senses of the word, very faithful.”
Write a 450-500 word essay about The Long Goodbye as an adaptation of the novel in relation to this quotation: “A successful adaptation balances ‘the comfort of ritual and recognition with the delight of surprise and novelty,’ not only carrying the aura with it, but contributing to its continual expansion.”
- Article on “Adaptation”Links to an external site. from The Chicago School of Media Theory;
- Turner Classic Movies pageLinks to an external site. on The Long Goodbye by Sean Axmaker;
- “Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye: Adaptation or Travesty?” Links to an external site.by Robert Merrill.
- Focus your commentary on specific elements of the film that differs from the novel. Discuss the effects on the overall “spirit of the original.”
***Important: Go beyond noting “factual” changes such as how Roger Wade died or that the Wades lived by the ocean, not a lake, or that the opening of film was not a first meeting between Marlowe and Terry. Consider the way in which the film does or does not capture the “spirit” of the novel. Why or why not?
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